Some network-based services allow customers to purchase and utilize instances of computing resources (“instances”), such as virtual machine instances, on a permanent or as-needed basis. In addition to virtual machine instances, these services typically allow customers to purchase and utilize instances of other types of computing resources for use with the virtual machine instances. For example, customers might be permitted to purchase and utilize instances of data storage resources, instances of database resources, instances of networking resources, and instances of other types of resources.
Network-based services such as those described above might include large numbers of resources, such as the instances of computing resources described above and the hardware and software resources utilized to provide the instances. For example, some network-based services might utilize hundreds of thousands or even millions of server computers in order to provide virtual machine instances and other types of instances of computing resources. Each of these server computers has its own configuration of hardware and installed software. Consequently, there may be tens or even hundreds of thousands of unique combinations of hardware and software components in such a service. This large number of possible combinations of hardware and software can make the management of such a service extremely complex.
The disclosure made herein is presented with respect to these and other considerations.